'Tis the Season for Literary and Academic Festivals

Lately, I have been making the rounds to a number of literary and academic festivals and conferences. On March 16, I attended the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival in downtown Suffolk, Virginia, which is the city where I currently live. It was nice to talk writing and books with several fellow writers. I was also scoping this event out for a possible table for either the Horror Writers Association Virginia Chapter to get a table at the event next year, or for me to get a table by myself. I think the Edgar Allen Poe anthology I appear in would be a good fit for this event, and I know some of my fellow Virginia chapter authors also write and have published some mysteries.

While there, I attended a presentation on short story writing, because that was something that I do and wanted to hear more about what these authors had to say about it.

After the festival, I was notified by mail that I won a raffle for a bundle of books by one of the authors, Karen McCullough. I have not dug into these just yet, but some of them do look tempting, and I can wait to cut into them soon.

I also work in higher education, and spring is a popular time for many academic festivals and conferences, which we sometimes call "academic development." It helps for teachers to get together once in a while and confer with each other about what we are doing and share ideas. One such festival I attended was the Old Dominion University Spring Conference on the Teaching of Writing. Being an ODU alumnus, I always enjoy getting back on campus. Interestingly, while I was there, I ran into Kole Matheson, who did a presentation with me at the 2018 conference. Not only did he recognize me, he even remembered my Frankenstein project that I presented that year (hoping to work on that again this summer).

After that, I attended the Norfolk State University William Carroll Writers' Festival. I enjoy teaching English composition at NSU, which is a traditionally Black university. During this festival I was asked to do a public reading, so I read my latest short story, "Beheaded" which appears in Madame Gray's Poe-Pourri of Terror, and is available here (plug, plug). The reaction was a mixed bag of those who seemed to love it, and those were more than a little shocked (in a good way [I think]).

Later in the festival, I participated in a creative writing activity where we were given cards from the kids' board game Apples to Apples and asked to come up with something within a few minutes. I ended up with the card "Knock, Knock" and thought to myself, "What the hell am I going to do with this?" But then I just used a little stream-of-consciousness to see what followed, and I think I actually came with something pretty damn good. I might even try to sell it as a poem after a little editing to clean it up. That could be a good activity for others to try at home. This may have also led to me finding a new summer writing group🤞.

Lastly, just this week, I attended a professional development presentation at the other higher education institution where I teach, Paul D. Camp Community College. It was about latest practices on diversity and distance learning. Again, it's a good way to compare what I do in the classroom with some of my colleagues and provide ideas on how to improve.

And speaking of PDCCC, I was asked to add another literature class in the second eight weeks of the semester, which I was allowed to gear toward Romantic elements in literature, both during the Romantic movements in the United States and England and unto today. I do feel that teaching writing and literature improves my own writing, and would encourage anyone who is qualified to teach to do so. I may have to post a little bit more about this at another time as it lends itself to another topic.

That's about it, and looking at it now, boy have I been busy. Even if I have not had that much time to write lately, I have been immersing myself in the writing, education, and publishing field. This immersion, in my opinion is the best way to find success (I hope).